I’ve had a lot of people tell me how to breathe. Yoga teachers, pilates teachers, bodywork instructors, voice teachers, my mother. All these different opinions, even when very well informed, can get confusing. When I’m confused about body advice, I always do two things: take a look at the relevant anatomy, and play around with tuning in to that anatomy in different ways, just to get a sense of the range and find out how to support my own body.

Knowing what’s going on inside your body when you breathe helps you towards a highly functional, dynamically responsive, and capable breath mechanism. It also helps you curate the commands you get from others.

The article is one of the clearest explanations I’ve read in a while about those physical mechanisms of breathing and the difference between how the thoracic cavity and abdominal cavity respond as part of that.

No one kind or style of breath is called for all the time. That’s really important. Kaminoff reminds us of that and tells us why.

You can never have too many reminders of how badass the diaphragm is.

Yoga teachers, how have you been cuing and explaining breath? Is this article useful for you?